After Mrs. Zommer had finished telling what happened, Freide looked into my eyes and asked, “What do you say to that event? Isn’t it a fine event?” And here Freide lifted her right hand and counted with her fingers, naming each of her children who had been killed. For every name she bent one finger, except for the thumb, which she left upright. Then she raised her left hand to her eyes, rubbing her right eye with the two middle fingers, and fell silent. And I too fell silent. The blessed and merciful God was cruel to me and put no words of comfort in my mouth to console Freide.
After she had said farewell and gone away, I thought of going to the graveyard. I did not expect to find there the books that had disappeared from the Beit Midrash, but I went like any man who has happened to come to the town where his fathers are buried and goes to prostrate himself on their graves.
Our graveyard slopes upward and slopes downward, and all its slopes are full of graves that crowd in on each other. There are three that take abundantly and give abundantly: the land, the authorities, and so on. What they take away can be seen, and what they give is concealed in the graveyard: they take the living and they give the dead. Grave literally touches grave — not as in the town, where there are many places free between one house and the next. It grieves me to say it, but it is so: The men of the old Beit Midrash did right to leave the town, for the graveyard is full and there is no room for a new grave.
I walk among the graves and think of nothing at all, but the two emissaries of the heart, my two eyes, look and see. These eyes are under the control of the heart, and the heart is under the control of Him who puts to death and brings to life. Sometimes He allows us to contemplate those that are alive, and sometimes those that have died.
Those that died before the war and those that died in the war and those that died after the war lie here together, as if there were no difference between them. So long as they lived, some grieved over days gone by and some looked forward to the days to come. Now that they are dead men, the latter have abandoned their expectations and the former grieve no more.
All the powers of the eye have a limit, and a man can only see according to the range of his eyes. But even if you should cover one eye with the other, the dead would come and stand before you, and you could not help but see them completely.
Far from the other dead in the old graveyard the tabernacle of the zaddik stands out. The roof of the tabernacle has been removed, and its walls are bowed and falling. After two or three generations, not a sign of the mausoleum will remain in this heap of ruins; the generations to come will not know that a great zaddik is interred here, and he too will forget that he once filled the post of rabbi here in the town. For at the hour of his passing he promised the men of this town that he would defend them against evil — and where is his promise? Once these zaddikim have passed away and ascended on high, they pay no more heed to us; the needs of the living are trivial in the eyes of the righteous dead, and it is not worth their while to beg compassion for a trivial thing. Only think how many zaddikim have promised us that they would not rest up above until they had brought the Redeemer, but once they pass away they forget their promises; some for fear of neglecting the study of the Torah, for they cannot bear to neglect their studies in the firmament for a single hour; others because they were given the honor of expounding the Torah to the other righteous in paradise, so that none of the righteous should exert themselves too much in prayer and bring the Redeemer. One way or the other, heavy is the pain of the living.
I did not enter the zaddik’s tabernacle, and I had my very good reasons; I had heard that great saints, once so many years have gone by since their passing, do not come to visit their graves. Instead, I turned to my departed relatives. First I went to the distant relatives and then to the near ones, and then to the nearest ones, so that they might inform my father and mother and keep their hearts from fainting all of a sudden. Some people refrain from visiting the graves of their father and their mother on the same day, and they are right, for when I went to my mother’s grave my eyes were clear, but when I went from there to my father’s grave, my eyes were blinded with tears.
I was not present at the hour of my father’s passing, and I was not at his graveside when they put up his tombstone. Carved in the stone, those verses were shining white, showing no sign of the tears I shed when I composed them. Now my tears showed, but through them I could not read the verses.
Fourteen years have gone by since the day Father passed away, and still the tombstone is new. And near it, on his grave, stands a second stone, that of an old scholar, a colleague of Father’s. What could the men of the town do? The dead ask for a grave and a stone, and since that old man had asked to be laid by his friend and they could find no room for his tombstone, they set it up on Father’s grave. My sister used to tell me that our father often appeared to her in a dream with his hand on his heart, like one who feels oppressed and supports his heart with his hand.
When I returned from the graveyard I found Yeruham Freeman sitting on the ground repairing the road. I said to him, “Are you repairing the road from the graveyard to the town or from the town to the graveyard?” Yeruham lifted his eyes from the ground and did not answer.
Chapter seventeen. Yeruham Freeman
It seems to me that no one hates me like Yeruham Freeman. Why does he hate me, when I have done him no harm? On the contrary, whenever I happen to pass him I greet him like a friend, though he answers with a mumble. I have a secret fondness for this young man. That lean body without an ounce of fat, those eyes that burn like the eyes of a sufferer from malaria, and also, if you like, his ragged, dust-colored working clothes move my heart. Every day, from sunrise to sunset, he sits in the street, pounding out gravel with his hammer or digging dirt and filling up holes to repair the streets of our town, damaged during the war. From his face you can see that he is not happy in his work, but he takes pains in the doing of it, like one who knows that there is nothing else before him. And since there is nothing else before him, he takes pains in the doing of it. I have heard that the city fathers are satisfied with his work and pay no attention to his ideas, because of which he was expelled from the Land of Israel. I am telling no tales and revealing no secrets, for everyone knows that this young man had fallen into evil ways, and before they expelled him he was imprisoned for distributing manifestoes to Arabs and Jews. In any case, since he returned here he has had nothing to do with evil things and does not mix with the other communists in the town; he has nothing to do with anyone, not even with himself. How can a man have anything to do with himself or not have anything to do with himself? He who sings and talks to himself has something to do with himself; he who does not sing or talk to himself has nothing to do with himself. It depends on whether or not he sings and talks to himself. From sunrise to sunset Yeruham does his work in silence. When the sun sets he loads his tools on his back, goes down to the river, washes off the dirt, and goes back home. I do not know what he does at home, whether he sits and reads, or sleeps. Since I have known him I have not seen him strolling at night, either with a girl or alone.